


hunger

by oceansinmychest



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fruit, Innuendo, One Shot, Pomegranates, Season/Series 02, Suggestive Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-07 00:37:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15897339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: After the passing of Rita Bennett, the Governor keeps her Deputy company. At Vera's home, a pomegranate is torn asunder as some unholy offering. One by one, the seeds are fed to her.





	hunger

**Author's Note:**

> Rated 'M' to be on the safe side. However, there's no sexually explicit content.
> 
> This also happens to be my 100th Wentworth fic, my word.

On the patio, Vera peers at the lawn turned indigo from the night’s advancement. The property belongs to her now. Time has ignored, neglected, and passed over them. In the midst of hearty conversation, she loses track. A bottle of wine sits on the round, metal table, half-consumed. Ms. Ferguson had been kind enough to reach a compromise with a rich Cabernet, neither Shiraz nor Pinot to fuel the pleasant company.

In the presence of the inmates, it is sometimes difficult to regard Joan as human, but as a statue. When they’re alone, however, they exchange stares and small, clipped smirks as a coded language. 

Joan understands what it means to emerge from the rubble of a broken home; she sees a shade of who she could have (used to) be in Vera’s meekness and remarkable reserve.

Her yard seems empty, she mildly notes, the soil turned and barren, expecting a garden, but she doesn’t know what to plant. Mum’s insults remain a jab to the throat, a systematic crushing of the deflated heart. _You haven’t a green thumb; you ruin everything._

Rita’s yowling has been reduced to an echo, a distorted memory. Her teeth suck in her bottom lip. She chews it in distraction, in thought, before reaching for her glass. The silence in her childhood home unsettles Vera. Her slow-winded metamorphosis does not happen overnight.

The torch’s flame saunters, illuminating their bodies in the crawling dark. Vera fantasizes about redecoration as a meager distraction. She entertains the fantasy of a brick wall and maybe a hearth to curl up beside. That lowers her shoulders as well as her guard.

“What are you thinking about, Vera?”

With an inquisitive inflection, Joan studies her. Vera pulls her legs into the chair and crosses them for comfort’s sake, neglecting civility. She rests a hand on her knee, garbed in an over-sized tee. She prefers the looseness over being smothered.

Doe’s eyes flit to the grated, metal table. Perfectly round, the thing has marvelously not succumbed to rust. Holding her glass, she attempts to balance it on her thigh. She sneaks a glance at her superior, her confidante, her something or other.

“Nothing much,” she confesses in a hushed tone, as if she happened to be a conspirator.

Rita’s room is empty, everything disposed of or donated. It amazes her how she can sleep easily now.

Met with a black stare, she could never tell what Joan was thinking. Perhaps that made her wondrous, archaic, an old soul. Or maybe that’s the danger of hero worship.

All her rosy feelings bubble at the surface. Vera marvels how self-assured this woman can be. The iron curtain is drawn back in a disciplinarian ponytail. She prefers black and earthen colors to compliment her physique. Joan makes a non-committal sound.

“Mm.” A hawkish tilt of her head. “Freed from the shackles of your mother, do you feel cleansed?”

She doesn’t want to talk about it. Akin to a loyal devotee situated in the front pew, she answers. The preacher’s called her out, shed some light like the hungry torch that gives a little heat.

“Yes, it’s... liberating.”

Her voice loses its nervous waver, cast into uncertainty and the first steps where she strays from the narrow path.

“What you feel will pass,” Joan comments as if the truth of the matter is engraved onto her bones.

That low, inexorable voice soothes. Vera does not bother disguising her relief. She’s always been transparent, her emotions touching the surface, her bloody heart pinned to her sleeve.

As a near-Pavlovian reward, Joan reaches across the table. She does not permit herself to touch Vera’s hand thought the temptation pulls at her blackened insides. Once she reaches for the cutting board and knife, she speaks.

Ripe in the Spring, the pomegranate finds itself most plentiful in October: a month of great transition. Still pleasantly warm outside, a chill threatens to creep in. Bone-thin, Vera fights off a shudder.

“Did you know, Vera, that the tree of a pomegranate represents friendship? Arguably, the fruit alludes to a rebirth of sorts.”

A standard education acknowledges the myth. This is the fruit of luxury, or prosperity, of class. Unconcerned by spirituality, she preys on the stories for order’s sake.

Deflowering the pomegranate is no easy task. Meticulous in all ways of life, she readies the fruit for her willing disciple. Set on a cutting board, the offering holds still thanks to a firm grip. The steel blade sails through the top of the pomegranate. Scoring the piece, she cuts through the peel. Divides it into six, even sections. Piece by piece, she pulls the pomegranate apart. Dismantles it as if this is her second nature, scavenging the dead. Each section is reversed, the seeds falling into a clean, clear bowl.

She handles the knife with ease. Her mechanical motions suggest that she’s done this before. The marbled slab bleeds. This is not a tale, this is simply fact. Juice puddles from the remains.

“I only knew of the myth; I’ve never had one before.”

Vera lowers her legs which dangle over the seat, feet barely touching the pavement. Idly, she imagines what the interior of Joan’s underworld must look like. Does she have a dog? Or three?

Her home must be as lonely as her own, she concludes.

“Here,” she commands rather than speaks. From the bowl, she pinches an unholy offering.

In a Eucharistic motion, she honors with this quaint gift. Closing space between them, she twists her wrist. An extension of trust wills for Joan’s hands to be bare. The human mouth harbors millions of bacteria. One by one, she feeds her pomegranate seeds. The act costs their freedom.

“Good?”

A rare smile graces her pursed lips, revealing a hint of an underbite before disappearing entirely. Drunk on the company, Vera nods in affirmation. How soft it feels, rolling across the flat bed of her tongue.

Hesitantly, she bites down. Swollen lips scrape her finger, relinquished with an audible pop. Joan lingers longer than necessary. 

“Ah, ah,” Joan admonishes. “Do not spit it out.”

Shame colors her cheeks. With a gulp, she swallows. She does as she’s told. The next seed crunches between her teeth. Flavorful juice splashes across the bed of her tongue.

Obedience always goes rewarded.

“More?”

Maybe Vera’s imprudent for assuming the unspoken connotation. The innocent batting of her lashes strokes a flame within Joan. She hungers for the naivety – to keep Vera close and possess her (guard her), but never damn her.

“... Please,” she whispers, the wine forgotten like a lost libation.

In anticipation, she leans forward, her chest pressed against the ledge.

“My, how insatiable,” she remarks, innuendo dripping from her lips.

Expression a sultry one, her eyelids lowered accompanying the invitation. Thirst quenched, the tangy taste explodes within her mouth. She yearns to have more, wants to sample her pulse points, her wrist, her skin without the fruit. What a fool she makes of herself, what a mess.

A rivulet trickles down her crooked finger. Vera laps at the sweet stickiness. Up and down, she leaves a trail that rivals her thirst. She expects Joan to recoil from her forwardness, her right to action, but the Governor simply smirks before wiping her hands on a warm, damp cloth.

Not the Governor, Joan, as she is wont to remind her.

Heat fills her to the core. Pacified, Vera relaxes on her seat, her lashes curled. Winter still houses inside of Joan. For now, she takes pleasure in Vera’s delight. The taking has yet to come.

**Author's Note:**

> As an American, I tend to forget the Australia's seasons are different... I believe October's Spring there?


End file.
